Zazen and the End of Stress

The predominance of ego in a person’s life can make for much inward trouble. A detailed description of this trouble can be found in Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. Among the inner disturbances that Tolle describes are identifying one’s worth with possessions, leading to a sense of diminishment when they are lost and envy of others who have more; worry about one’s reputation, feeling incomplete or that one does not have enough, worry about one’s external attractiveness, resentful inner criticism of others in order to put them beneath oneself, casting about for ways to elevate oneself, upset when one’s opinion is contradicted, and a fear of being inferior or inadequate. Of course this is just a partial list of all the inward hurly-burly that springs from ego.

The end of this hurly-burly is what the Buddha is apparently referring to in the Bahiya Sutta, where he says that when the “you” disappears in a person, “This, just this, is the end of stress.”[1] The American poet, Delmore Schwartz, called his ego, or his “you,” “the heavy bear who goes with me.”[2] Freedom from this heavy bear, when realized, brings the exuberant exclamations of delight that one finds in Zen accounts of awakening. To find that such a burden has been lifted from one brings joy and gratitude.

For most practitioners, the lifting of this burden is a gradual process. It can’t be deliberately brought about or rushed. For the practitioner, a sign that ego has lifted a bit is that  he or she has a sense of freedom, space, and contentment.